WM/Movement and Exploration House Rules
Overland Movement Rate A group's movement rate is based on the effective Move of the slowest member of the group and the worst Fatigue Factor in the group. Any member of the group may roll Hiking. Success increases effective Move by 20%; failure decreases it by 10%, and Critical Failure decreases it by 50%. Then find the slowest effective Move in the group, divide that by two, and multiply it by the worst Fatigue Factor in the group. The result is the movement rate in miles per hour on roads. Actual movement rate depends on terrain, weather, and scouting: A group may march for a number of hours a day equal to the worst Fatigue. If the group is interrupted while moving, each group member is assessed Fatigue for one hour's worth of movement. Fatigue Factor Each character has a Fatigue Factor. It represents how often and for how long they need to rest. Fitness increases the Fatigue factor and encumbrance decreases it. A character's Fatigue Factor starts at 1, and is reduced by 1/10th their encumbrance penalty. A character with Fit or Recover Energy 15+ adds 0.1, and a character with Very Fit or Recover Energy 20+ adds 0.2. When walking with a group, a character can reduce the encumbrance penalty to Fatigue Factor by 0.1 for every 3 points of effective Move they have over the slowest member of the group. The encumbrance penalty cannot be reduced below 0. Winged flyers moving at less than 1/3 their maximum speed reduce their Fatigue Factor by 0.2. :Example: Berkun has an effective Move of 8, no load, and is neither Fit nor Unfit, giving him a Fatigue Factor of 1. Lenia has an effective Move of 5, a Light load, and Recover Energy 20, giving her a Fatigue Factor of 1.1. Mrugnak has an effective Move of 6, a Medium Load, and is Fit, giving him a Fatigue Factor of 0.9. The worst Fatigue Factor is Mrugnak's 0.9, and the slowest Move is 5. The group moves at 2.25 miles/hour. :Individually, Lenia can move at 2.75 miles/hour and Mrugnak can move at 2.7 miles/hour. Together, they move less because Mrugnak has to rest more frequently than Lenia and Lenia can't walk as far between rests as Mrugnak can. Making maximum speed would mean separating the group. Scouting A group that sends scouts ahead is less likely to get ambushed and more likely to succeed in Navigation or Area Knowledge rolls. It also moves slower than a group that doesn't scout. Scouting normally reduces movement rate by 25%. If all the scouts have a Fatigue Factor at least 0.2 better than the worst Fatigue Factor in the group, or an Effective Move 3 better than the worst Effective Move, they can scout while people are resting and there is no movement penalty for scouting. A group that doesn't scout at all gets a 50% bonus on movement rate, but is more likely to get lost or ambushed. Food and Foraging While outside of settled lands, a group can forage for food. This can be done overnight while in camp with a trained Survival, Naturalist, or Fishing roll. Success yields MoS meals of forage rations weighing 2 lbs each. Fishing can only be performed while camped near a water source. Delvers can also spend time to forage. This takes an hour without movement. Roll against trained Survival, Naturalist, or Fishing. Success yields MoS meals of forage rations, and a cumulative -3 to successive foraging efforts within a mile. There is no effect on failure. Finally, after killing anything, a delver can can butcher it. This takes one hour, doubled for each SM over 0 and halved for SM-1, less 5 minutes per MoS on a Survival (appropriate terrain) roll. A butchered creature produces (HP^3/30) forage rations. A forager with a lot of time can produce 1.5 times as many rations by doubling the time spent butchering, but this must be declared in advance. Some creatures are not healthy to eat and there are generally social restrictions against eating other sentients. Encamped delvers can spend 8 hours to render down any number of forage meals into good quality trail rations. Stopping to forage or rendering meals to good quality down increases the frequency of random encounters. Orienteering It is distressingly easy to get lost. Maps are usually of poor quality; line of sight to landmarks is lost behind hills and forests, and even roads may have unexpected turns or branches. Travelers can either navigate overland or follow a road or a river. Navigating overland is generally trickier, but not all places can be accessed by roads or rivers. ;Modifiers to Orienteering Rolls :Choose the best modifier that applies for each category except Terrain. Terrain modifiers are cumulative with each other. Following Roads and Rivers To reach a known destination by following a road or a river, roll Area Knowledge daily. Success means that day's march is successful and on course, or that the group arrives at the destination if they are within 1 day's hike. Failure by 5 or less causes the loss of 1 hour's travel per point of failure, as the group backtracks to a known position. Failure by 6 or more means going off course without realizing it: the GM should plot the group's movement in a random direction for a random period. Following a road or river into the unknown requires an Area Knowledge roll daily. Success mean the GM correctly indicates the distance and directions covered that day. Failure means the GM lies about the distance and directions covered. Navigating Overland Groups traveling overland pick a direction and indicate how long (in miles or time) they plan to march that way. Roll Navigation with every change of direction or every day otherwise. Success means the group moves in that direction for the distance they intend. Failure means the group goes off course or marches more or less than intended. Going Off Course Failing an Area Knowledge roll by 6+ while following a road or river, or failing a Navigation check while traveling overland, causes the group to go off course. The GM secretly rolls 1d6 and caps it at 1 + the absolute value of the total Terrain penalties, then multiplies the result by 30 degrees. The group veers off course by that much from their starting point, randomly chosen between left or right. The GM should alert them as soon as they could reasonably expect to notice the deviation. :Example: The delvers are looking for the Hidden Shrine on the Govia Plains. They have a map and compass, but the Shrine is hidden, for at net -2 modifier. The navigator fails the roll, and the GM rolls 1d6, getting a 4. The maximum modifier is 1, so the delvers end up going 30 degrees from their planned course. The GM alerts them when they reach a lake, as they think the Shrine is somewhere on the plains. Sighting and Visibility Horizon Assuming an obstructed view, the horizon distance to the horizon in miles is the square root of 1.5 * height in feet, or around 3 miles for a SM0 character. A landmark can be seen an additional distance over the horizon, so a 6000' mountain peak can be seen from 33 miles away. For simplicity, the following table of heights and horizon are in use, and assume SM0 delvers: :Land heights are heights about sea level of the tallest point in the terrain, and include the heights of trees or brush in most cases. Visibility is capped at 40 miles due to haze. The horizon is either the maximum theoretical horizon for the terrain type. Intervening terrain blocks line of sight to lower terrain, but obviously taller terrain can still be seen. :Example: Lenia is on the beach at Cape Shad, looking around. She isn't scouting, so she can theoretically see for 9 miles in all directions. To the north, she can't quite see the ocean past the dunes, but she can see a sandbar island. To the west, she can see a medium sized cove and the coastal plain on the far side, but not the small patch of swamp past the cove. To the east, she can see the Cape Shad farms and a line of hills a mile and a half away, but nothing beyond the hills. To the south, the Sylwood rises up after a few miles, but she can see a wooded hill about a mile into it. The Dergan hills tower over the Sylwood, rising up to the Gray Mountains. She can easily see the Mountains, but nothing beyond them. : :If Lenia were to cast Flight on herself and fly up 1000', none of the terrain except for the highest points of the Dergan hills and Grey Mountains would block her line of sight. She would be able to see the small valleys southwest of Ettinheads, the swamps and bays due west of her, and the Antillan Sea to her north, out to a distance of 40 miles. The Mage Storm would be an indistinct smudge of clouds to the west, for instance. Visibility Visibility is the distance at which an object can be clearly discerned. It depends on the object size and motion, the available light, and the weather. The maximum distance an object can be seen at is the distance of the line on the Size chart equal to 6 + the observer's Vision + lighting modifiers + object size modifier + absolute value of the object's speed penalty. This the maximum distance the object can be discerned from the surroundings and no details or identifying marks are visible. The distance that details about an object can be seen at is the distance of the line on the Size chart equal to the observer's Vision + lighting modifiers + object size modifier + absolute value of the object's speed penalty. The observer still must make a successful Vision roll with penalties for distance to determine the details. If an object or stationary creature is Camouflaged, or a creature is using Stealth, the maximum distance that it can be seen at is the distance of the line on the Size chart equal to the observer's Vision + lighting modifiers + object size modifier - the margin of success of the skill check. If that distance is within the observer's detail distance, the observer may attempt Vision rules to determine details. The observer must still beat the object or creature's skill check in order to actually spot it. :Example 1: Connell is a druid with Vision-16, trying to spot enemy reinforcements coming up in the dark. Lighting penalties are -5, and the enemy squads are effectively SM+2. The enemy is moving at 1 yd/s. Connell totals 6+16-5+2+0 for a 19, and can see them from 3000 yards away. If he had Night Vision 4 and could ignore 4 points of the lighting penalty, he could see them from 15000 yds away, nearly 8 miles! He won't be to make out details such as what sort of enemies until they close to his detail range, which is 16-5+2 for a 13 and 300 yards. Coincidentally, that's the point at which his ally Ayake, with Vision-10, can even begin to see the enemies. :Example 2: As Connell is scanning for the enemy, a crocodile zombie is sneaking up on him. The zombie is SM+3 and made its Stealth check by 2. Connell totals 16-5+3-2 for a 12 and 200 yards away. Since that is within his detail distance for a something that large, Connell will be able to make out details as soon as he sees it. Ayake, in contrast, can't spot the zombie on his own until it is within 20 yards, and can't make out any details if Connell points it out to him at a distance. Cartography and Measuring Range A successful Cartography roll gives the distance and size of visible terrain feature, both numbers to within +/-50%. Each margin of success reduces the error by 10%. Failure gives no data. Critical failure means the GM lies.